What is it about?
Cancer cells can invade surrounding tissues using different behaviors, including mesenchymal and amoeboid forms of migration. These behaviors have traditionally been thought to rely on fundamentally different strategies, making it challenging to therapeutically target cancer invasion. In this study, we demonstrate that both invasion strategies rely on the same pair of molecular scissors to cut through tissue barriers.
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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our findings challenge a long-standing view of how cancer cells spread through surrounding tissues. It has generally been thought that when cancer cells lose the ability to cut through tissue barriers, they can simply adapt by squeezing through existing holes or spaces in the tissue to invade. We found that, despite using different strategies to invade, cancer cells still depend on the same molecular “scissors,” MMP14, to break through their surroundings. This unexpected finding reshapes our understanding of how cancer cells invade tissues and suggests that seemingly different types of invading cancer cells may share a common vulnerability that could potentially be targeted to limit tumor spread.
Perspectives
As metastasis is the most deadly aspect of most solid cancers, we're hopeful that this study will make people reconsider the possibility of therapeutically targeting cancer cell invasion to prevent metastatic disease. Additionally, this work demonstrates the importance of moving beyond engineered tissue-mimicking systems to validate physiological relevance of findings established in vitro.
Adam Olson
Van Andel Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Amoeboid–mesenchymal transition and the proteolytic control of cancer invasion plasticity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2520717123.
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